drawerfandomcom-20200214-history
User blog:Nikki Lee 1999/Nikki reviews: San Andreas
First off, let me say how surprising it is that this is the first real disaster film in almost 6 years. After the film "2012", Box Office Mojo only lists movies like "Contagion", "The Grey" and "Gravity" which can hardly be considered disaster movies, movies like "Noah" and "Godzilla" which contain fantasy elements, and films that are too low budget and low gross to be given major attention by anyone. So basically, San Andreas is the first major pure disaster film since mother of all disaster movies "2012" which came out in 2009 (I know, confusing right?). 2012 may not be a good film, but is undeniably the most well known disaster modern disaster movie, and probably the most popular of all time. So please understand where people are coming from when they inevitably compare San Andreas to 2012. Especially if those people are too young to be familiar with the disaster movies of the 80's and 90's. But on second thought, it isn't really that surprising we haven't had a disaster movie in so long. Not only did 2012 just seem untoppable as far as pure mayhem and destruction are concerned, the main appeal of disaster movies is that we get to see cities and buildings destroyed while our powerless protagonists run about trying to survive the brutal forces of nature. But we pretty much get all that in Transformers, in Godzilla, even in Man of Steel and Avengers. Disaster movies are basically Transformers movies but without any Transformers. So it's understandable that with special effects and CGI becoming more convincing and less expensive, that we are going to get fewer and fewer straight disaster movies. But it's nice sometimes to look back and enjoy an older and mostly abandoned sub genre. With that in mind, let's proceed with the actual review. The biggest problem I have with San Andreas, is that it doesn't even really up the ante with the destruction porn. There's nothing ground breaking in it special effects wise. It's actually quite underwhelming. At the end of the movie I thought to my self "When is the big earthquake coming? As for the characters, it's your typical disaster movie lineup. It's a lack of characterization at all. Which is troubling because in a movie where the point is showing your main characters in life threatening peril, it seems like it would be imperative for us to care about them a bit. Almost none of the dialogue was even the least bit clever. I found myself saying the dialogue before the characters many times throughout the film. It was a huge waste of Dwayne Johnson, who will nail a performance no matter what dialogue you give him. It seems as if he only adds something to a movie if he is actually given a character to work with. Who knew? Aspects even seem stitched together from a slough of other disaster movies. The nearly divorced couple from Twister. The douche new husband from Twister and 2012. The estranged father-daughter relationship from 2012. The giant ocean liner crashing into the coast scene from 2012. The ground swelling special effect from... 2012. The child and parent trapped in rising water and across from a transparent wall scene from..... 2012. And the car rolling down the hill in the first scene looked like it was animated by Robot Chicken. Believe it or not, the San Andreas fault was not the largest crevasse featured in this film. It probably wasn't even in the top 5. The casting director seemed to have made sure that all female cast characters, both major or minor had supple breastage which was displayed prominently throughout the film. I'm not a prude, so I count this as neither a plus nor a minus for the film. I just found the choice to be rather odd for a disaster film. I was rather surprised that I saw neither Roland Emerich or Michael Bay's name at the end of this film. That being said, it did have a few good scenes, and it wasn't a complete failure. There were a few scenes of destruction where I said to my self "Oh wow. That's actually really cool". Without giving anything away, there were two suspenseful scenes in this movie, and both involved a persons limb being pinned under an automobile. The foreshadowing in the very very first scene is actually quite clever and funny. All-in-all, it's nowhere near the worst thing in the world, but after 6 years of waiting, it's literally nothing new. 3/10 or 1.5/5 Category:Blog posts